The city of Longueuil announces that it has killed 64 deer in Michel‑Chartrand Park. It plans to repeat the exercise till it gets down to five animals per km2.
Updates from October, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Mayor Plante went on Radio‑Canada Thursday morning to talk about her decision not to run again – this link has a summary of what she said.
Radio-Canada also floats the name of Vincent Marissal as a possible successor. Marissal, who used to be a La Presse columnist, is currently QS MNA for Rosemont.
The Gazette is implicitly happy to see her go, cheering along with the people who couldn’t stand her – and you know why without even looking. The wealthier the respondent, the more they dislike her. After all, they need somewhere to park the family’s four cars.
Nicholas
CBC’s This is Montreal emergency podcast noted that in July Plante said that maybe she could take a break by becoming a minister, as she’d only have one file, not every file. Maybe there will be an opening in Rosemont provincially, or Papineau federally, with parties that will not be in government, so she can have a few years before becoming a minister.
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Kate
This is a beautifully chosen political moment: the CAQ refuses to stop funding private
Catholicreligious schools to the tune of $160 million yearly.Chris
Incorrect summary Kate. There’s nothing Catholic-only here. The motion applied to all religious schools, and that 160k is for all, not just Catholic
Kate
I wonder how many are madrassas.
Joey
From the National Assembly transcript – the examples the premier cites are all private schools whose origins are Catholic (I think they are all basically secular now – I don’t think, say, College Notre-Dame, is a ‘religious’ school in the same sense as your typical Hasidic school):
M. Legault : Oui. Mme la Présidente, je prends note que le Parti libéral du Québec, Québec solidaire et le Parti québécois veulent couper, veulent couper le financement au collège Brébeuf, au collège Notre-Dame, au collège de Montréal, au collège Jésus-Marie, au collège Regina Assumpta, au Petit Séminaire de Québec, au collège de Lévis. C’est une décision qui est appuyée par trois partis politiques, incluant le Parti libéral. Puis ils ne nous ont pas démontrés, dans ces écoles-là… il y avait un problème. Donc, on va examiner le dossier de façon détaillée.
La Presse says QS voted *with* the government?!?
Kate
I was shocked by QS doing that. Disappointing.
Ian
It’s been a long time now that QS have been openly ethnonationalist, you shouldn’t be surprised at all.
nau
From a Radio Canada article from 2022: “Même si le système scolaire québécois est laïque, dans les faits, de nombreuses écoles primaires et secondaires ont une vocation religieuse explicite. … C’est le cas de 50 établissements parmi les 165 écoles privées que subventionne le gouvernement. Parmi celles-là, 27 sont catholiques, 14 juives, quatre musulmanes; deux sont protestantes évangéliques, deux arméniennes et une grecque orthodoxe.”
Per a CTV article, QS had their own motion yesterday to withdraw the funding from religious schools, which the CAQ also voted down. If they voted against the PQ motion, there was probably something else in there they didn’t like. Note that the QS motion was apparently tabled by a Ruba Ghazal, who I’m guessing is not overly likely to be a pur laine ethnonationalist.
Daisy
I would like the public funding removed from all 165 private schools, religious and non-religious alike. They contribute to the segregation and compartmentalization of society. 17% of high school students are in private schools! Imagine if almost all of them were in public schools, as only the very richest or those whose parents are willing to make extreme sacrifices would be able to attend non-subsidized schools. Our public schools would get better and society would be more integrated.
Kate
I wonder what percentage of MNAs’ kids go to private (but partly publicly funded) private school.
jeather
I admit I’m rather curious how actually secular some of the Catholic schools are — though I guess when you grade on the curve of “everything Christian is just our culture and not religion”, they’re all secular.
I assume the answer about politicians’ kids at private school, at the high school level, is well above 90%. I know why this information is not made public, but I would love if, in aggregate, it were.
Kate
I can make a guess. Modern religious schools are nothing compared to the way almost all schools used to be in Quebec (and which François Legault would have been told about, if not raised in). When my mother was in school – public school in Montreal – she not only had to go to class from Monday to Friday, but also had to show up at church on Sunday and sit with her classmates. It was mandatory; if you weren’t there, you had to bring a note from a parent, same as if you missed school. Everything was pinned to the ecclesiastical calendar, school was felt to be an extension of the church and the authority of the school had the power of the church behind it. If a teacher hit or humiliated a kid, the parent probably accepted that they deserved it.
Nothing is like that now. The private schools might teach religion and prepare kids for sacraments (do they?) but Legault is probably capable of thinking of modern Catholic private schools as merely “culturally Catholic” because of course all Québécois are.
A detail I recall from my mother: the girls and boys went to separate schools, but they all went to the same mass on Sunday. Girls and boys were seated on opposite sides of the central aisle, with girls ordered from the youngest in front to the oldest in back, the boys in the opposite order, to hinder the adolescents from making eyes at each other across the aisle. Never mind that these kids all lived in the same neighbourhood and many already knew each other outside of school.
Kevin
Brebeuf says it is no longer a “religious” school and hasn’t been for decades, even if Jesuits are on the board of directors.
I know someone who graduated from there within the past decade; next time I see them I’ll ask if catechism and the like are required.
Furthermore, the Ministry of Education doesn’t even track if any private schools are religious in outlook (or teach religion).
Kate
Is Loyola high school a religious school now?
Kevin
Something like 1/3 of kids in Montreal go to private school. And at some “French” schools like Bedford, about 80% of the students are immigrants or first-generation Canadians.
We really do have a three-tiered school system in this province.Joey
It seems that La Presse perhaps made a mistake in their initial story – the final version, with lots of colour from the National Assembly debate, doesn’t mention how QS voted on the motion but does indicate that the Liberals did and uses the same stunned reaction language to frame their decision (which is new). This is the language they used to describe the QS vote in the initial story; I’m assuming that they meant PLQ all along…
Andrew
I know this debate is about private schools, but it’s still worse that we have a boys only public school on the grounds of St-Josephs Oratory with the primary goal of providing a choir to sing at their services. L’école des Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal is part of the CSSDM
H. John
@Kate Loyola went as far as the Supreme Court to guarantee that they could teach a course from their Catholic perspective.
La Presse does a more detailed breakdown this morning (including Loyola in their analysis):
Kate
Fascinating stuff, H. John. I hadn’t realized how much the Jewish schools also benefit. Thank you.
Andrew, the odd thing about that school is that having an all‑boys choir school is very British.
jeather
To be clear: Jewish schools in particular do not get more money from the provincial government, they get money from parents and other donors, some of which has a federal tax deduction, and that is what is added up. You can disagree with the existence of the deduction, but it’s a little bullshit to describe the schools as “60% funded by tax money” by mixing together the Quebec subsidy (about the same for all private schools) and a federal tax deduction.
walkerp
I agree they absolutely have to cut these subsidies to private schools and put that money into the public school where it was intended to go after the Quiet Revolution.
However, this is not something that could be just done with a cut. You have to have some kind of transition plan. It would probably straight out kill some of the private schools, which could maybe become public. A very tricky and contentious business demanding a brave and strong politician, especially these days of whiny entitled individualism.
jeather
I have spent time thinking about what happens if they reduced the subsidy to zero over the next, say, decade. The expensive secular private schools (primarily English, I believe), will continue their slow roll to not using a subsidy and therefore not being limited to students with English eligibility; the non-Orthodox Jewish schools will make up for it by more donations — but the top French ones can hardly increase class sizes more, and yet are not going to be able to keep as many students if they double tuition fees. (There are very few English private schools in the 5-8k/year tuition range, just Villa Maria — not secular.)
carswell
Data point: At a dinner party yesterday, I was seated next to a 14-year-old who’s attending Collège Notre Dame. In response to my inquiry about whether it was still a religious school, she said no. A few religious artifacts like some stained glass windows and old paintings remained and there is a minor connection with the Oratory, whereby chorus students who want to can take part in certain performances. But there were no nuns or priests teaching, no crucifixes on classroom walls, no prominently displayed bibles or religious tracts. Non-Christians are welcome and made to feel comfortable she said.
She did complain about the provincially mandated religion and culture class. Said last year’s class was more interesting because it focused as much on other religions as Christianity (I didn’t ask about atheism). However, this year’s class is dominated by studying the various Christian sects, which she found exclusive and boring — but, she pointed out, this is the same course taught in other schools in the province.
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Kate
Commenter bob says in a different thread below, “As if we need evidence that rain is wet.” A new public health report says that “economic inequality” has serious effects on Montreal children’s health and development. In other words, it sucks to be poor.
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Kate
A Black man who made a racial profiling complaint against the SPVM and thought it had been thrown out in 2020 learned from the CBC that it’s still making its glacial progress through the process.
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Kate
Lots of pieces Thursday on Mayor Plante, who won’t even be leaving the position for a year.
CTV has five things about Plante; Radio‑Canada ponders the achievements of her terms in office; La Presse asks who will replace her with a quick poll which produced no clear choice. La Presse also now says they ran a poll which showed that a majority wouldn’t vote for her for a third term – but how many of the respondents would actually get out and vote?
TVA also has a short list of possible replacements at the helm of Projet.
More: her legacy in so many improvements to the city’s fabric; the Chamber of Commerce’s Michel Leblanc insists on seeing her big mistake as pitting bike paths against parking spaces. Le Devoir also looks at the obstacles Plante has encountered.
walkerp
Can we just get rid of polls at this point? They are so garbaged up and have basically turned into propaganda tools. What value do they provide?
Joey
Given the lack of any heirs apparent (or any credible opposition candidates), I imagine Dominique Olliver is really regretting some of those meals this morning.
DeWolf
A poll that pits the incumbent against an imaginary opponent is pretty much meaningless. Given that the opposition has no candidate for mayor, it’s easy to say you wouldn’t vote for Plante.
Interestingly… “De manière générale, selon nos données, les plus jeunes soutenaient plus largement un troisième mandat de Mme Plante. Idem pour les moins nantis et la classe moyenne. Les plus fortunés, eux, ne souhaitaient pas qu’elle reste. Plus d’un Montréalais sur deux gagnant au-dessus de 100 000 $ s’y opposait, et plus le salaire annuel augmente, plus cette proportion gagne en importance.”
And here I thought PM supporters were all landowning gentrifiers who spend their free time speeding around town on their expensive bicycles.
walkerp
Very telling that info, DeWolf. And the moneyed classes are the ones with the greatest influence in our media.
Joey
@DeWolf that tracks 100% with my personal experience talking about the City.
And, yes, that poll isn’t that instructive. It puts her ceiling at 50%+ – and the odds were good that her opponent would’ve been relatively weak. IMO it was her race to lose. Kudos to Mayor Plante for thinking of the greater good.
Ian
Yes of course, we all hate polls unless they can somehow prove our point?
Here’s the thing, DeWolf, you yourself don’t necessarily need to be personally rich to be a force for gentrification, you can just have that blissfully middle class navel-gazing mentality. Elitism comes in many manifested forms.
Oh wait, we’re not supposed to be snide here, oops.
Either way I just hope our next mayor isn’t afraid of cops and developers.
DeWolf
You’ve fallen for some culture war nonsense, Ian.
Gentrification is dollars and cents. You can be a “cashed-up bogan,” as the Australians say, and still be a force for gentrification because a rich person is still rich even if they are a working class hero in their heart of hearts. It isn’t about specialty coffee, curb extensions and bike lanes, it’s about property speculation, displacement and policies that enable those to happen.
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Kate
A woman died in suspicious circumstances in Anjou on Wednesday, but no homicide number yet.
JaneyB 10:20 on 2024-10-25 Permalink
For those who are curious, from article elsewhere, it seems that “In 2017, there were 32 deer. Now there are 117 deer living in a space that experts say can accommodate a maximum of 15 deer.” The meat from the cull will go to community organizations.
Kate 11:07 on 2024-10-25 Permalink
What nobody seems to be mentioning is that the cull will inevitably have to be repeated from time to time. Maybe they will get down to five animals per square kilometre this season, but give it another year or two and the herd will have grown again to an unsustainable size.
walkerp 11:22 on 2024-10-25 Permalink
Bring back cougars!
JP 12:27 on 2024-10-25 Permalink
Hmm…were cougars ever part of the ecosystem here. . . I do wonder if coyotes are a predator of deer. They seem more likely to have a presence.
Kate 13:55 on 2024-10-25 Permalink
Unfortunately, this park is hemmed in on all sides by suburbia, so nobody would welcome the introduction of predators.
Insert obvious joke here about the cougars all being in the bars at DIX30.
walkerp 15:29 on 2024-10-25 Permalink
Good one, Kate!
Blork 17:24 on 2024-10-25 Permalink
With any luck it will take some time before the population rebounds. I’ve lived very close to that park for more than 20 years (!!!) and it’s only the past five or six years (from my perspective) that it’s been a problem.
Back in the early oughts it was a treat to see a deer on my walks through the park. I once told someone there was about a 30% chance you’d see a deer if you followed the wooded paths, and even then you might see one or two. By 2020 that was basically 99%. By last year, if you didn’t see at least a dozen deer on a walk (most of them almost close enough to touch) then it seemed weird.
steph 10:06 on 2024-10-26 Permalink
I think it’s worth noting that culling happens regularly in many parks. Is the distinction here is that it’s happening in a municipal park, so the public has easier access to the counselors that need to pass the motion. In provincial parks, the culls seem to happen uncontested (as there’s no platform to contest them?)